“Politicians are so desperate to find ‘the moderate Muslims’ that they’ll do extraordinarily stupid things,” wrote anti-sharia activist Pamela Geller in 2014 concerning the formation of a congressional Ahmadiyya Muslim Caucus. As this series will show, she had considerable reason to doubt the expectations this tiny Muslim sect, almost universally persecuted by other Muslims, often globally raises as an antidote to Islam’s sharia dangers.
Official Ahmadi organs such as the True Islam online public outreach project consistently present a message that is soothing to non-Muslim ears. In this “True Islam…fighting is only permissible in self-defense.” Accordingly, an “aggressive ‘jihad by the sword’ has no place in Islam,” but rather Muslims should “wage a bloodless, intellectual ‘jihad of the pen.’”
The True Islam website elaborated on Ahmadi beliefs on a page that has apparently now been removed:
Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is the only Islamic organization to believe that the long-awaited messiah has come in the person of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908) of Qadian, India. Ahmad claimed to be the metaphorical second coming of Jesus of Nazareth and the divine guide, whose advent was foretold by the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad. The Community believes that God sent Ahmad, like Jesus, to end religious wars, condemn bloodshed and reinstitute morality, justice and peace.
Such pleasing pieties give the Ahmadis an outsized role in the imaginations of non-Muslims, particularly political leaders. For example, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Caucus boasted bipartisan cofounders, the California Democrat Representative Jackie Speier and her Virginia Republican colleague Frank Wolf, a renowned, longstanding religious freedom advocate. For his engagement on behalf of oppressed Ahmadis worldwide, he received the 2013 Ahmadiyya Muslim Humanitarian Award at the American Ahmadis’ annual Jalsa Salana convention.
Previously on July 27, 2012, Speier, Wolf, and Representative Mike Honda had cosponsored a Congressional resolution with Representative Zoe Loefgren praising the current Ahmadi “caliph,” Mirza Masroor Ahmad. The resolution hailed Ahmad’s “commitment to world peace, justice, nonviolence, human rights, religious freedom, and democracy.” The same day, Ahmad addressed congress members, staff, and others in the Rayburn House Office Building.
Ahmad also made his first visit that same year on December 3-4 to the European Parliament (EP) in Brussels as the guest of the parliament’s newly created cross-party Friends of Ahmadiyya Muslims Group. An official Ahmadi website was enthused that on December 4 “he delivered a historic keynote address to a packed audience of more than 350 guests representing 30 countries.” While he lauded Islam’s supposed “specific guidance on how to establish peace,” Charles Tannock, a British Member of the EP (MEP) and the group chair, remarked upon the address that “Ahmadi Muslims are a welcome example of tolerance in the world.”
Ahmad has met with numerous dignitaries, including the Canadian Prime Ministers Stephen Harper and Paul Martin, particularly at the annual Ahmadi National Peace Symposium in London, which began in 2004. Then the London mayor, now the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson presented Ahmad with a London bus souvenir at the 2012 symposium. At the 2015 symposium, his fellow Conservative Party member, the then-Secretary of State for International Development Justine Greening, claimed that Ahmad’s remarks “totally demolished” the Islamic State’s claims.
Similar enthusiastic politicians’ statements accompanied the February 26, 2016, True Islam launch at Washington, DC’s Rayburn House Office Building. For Honda, the 2015 Ahmadiyya Muslim Humanitarian Award laurate, True Islam’s Eleven Precepts “really reflects the principles of the constitution of the United States.” This Ahmadi interpretation of Islam “didn’t sound too much different from what I had learned from the history of Islam.”
Texas Democratic Representative Al Green in his address pronounced that “Islam speaks for truth, and justice and freedom and equality. Islam is a religion of peace.” He noted that he wears in expression of his Christian beliefs a pin with “God is good all the time,” which he ignorantly declared was a “rough translation of Allahu Akbar.” He intended to state this phrase, which in Arabic means “Allah is greater” and in its origins signifies that Islam’s god is supreme (hence the phrase’s use by jihadists as a war cry), on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Rather than any jihadist threats, Green’s main concern, proclaimed to audience applause, was “solidarity with the Muslim community” and that “we all stand for justice for Islam.” Without any evident expertise, he self-confidently asserted that “Islam is one of the world’s great religions and no religion, no religion, condones the taking of innocent human life.” Under his fatwa, jihadists such as those in the Islamic State “are only evil people doing evil things. It is not religion.”
Honda and his fellow California Democrat, Representative Judy Chu, invoked America’s painful history of interning Japanese-Americans during World War II. Honda condemned “yellow journalism” for incitement against Japanese-Americans, while Chu warned that “we must never use fear as an excuse to harm innocent people.” She criticized “presidential candidates that are promoting hate speech” and proposals for “ill-conceived laws against Muslim immigrants and others.” “We must stand up to hate and make sure that our voices are there against xenophobia and racism. They have no place in our country,” she intoned.
Chu indicated once again how politicians enjoy posing with Ahmadis. These “good” Muslims supposedly vouch for Islam’s benign nature and disprove the faith’s critics as misinformed bigots. Yet as a forthcoming article will reveal, among the numerous problems that make such hopes for the Ahmadis misplaced is the complete rejection this fringe group faces among the global Muslim community.